“... would be worth it: ‘200 children’, he noted, at ‘$5 to 10,000 [per] kid’ was a small price compared to the money to be made from uninterrupted smelting. This flagrant, shameless spreading of poison for profit is a source of indignation throughout Fraser’s book. There are acidic portrayals of Guggenheim heirs – Peggy, in her Venetian palazzo ...”

“... the credit for creating the Marvel characters – has been simmering since the early 1980s, when Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, who did the artwork and more, began to grumble in public about their contributions being underacknowledged. As Riesman says, it’s unlikely ever to be resolved: there was minimal documentation of the creative process because comics ...”

“... was to provide for his family is made amply clear in these pages. That there has also been a price to pay can be inferred from the conditions which he imposed on publication. Wyatt’s fourth wife, Verushka, was not shown the manuscript, clearly on the hard-nosed calculation that its efficacy in securing her financial security should not be compromised ...”

“... returns to her job at the Embassy. A crisis gathers after the bombing, clues are discovered and Jack Queller, a scapegrace CIA agent, is put on the scent. Queller was a big player way back when, ‘the guy who trained bin Laden’ and supplied his mujahids with missiles. After the Russian retreat from Afghanistan, bin Laden betrayed Queller, putting a ...”

“... Nationalism and British Policy in Iran: The End of Informal Empire, 1941-53 (Bloomsbury, £28.99), Jack Taylor describes their lives of relative luxury at Grangemouth’s sister refinery in Abadan. (He suggests that the Scottish manager of the oil-linked Imperial Bank of Persia may have been responsible for introducing football to Iran.) In the 1950s ...”

“... a Cockney mum and never harm one hair of a dog’s head. Even wrong ’uns like Cornell and Jack McVitie didn’t go that far. They cheated, popped pills, blasted pub ceilings, did damage for cash, but they loved their families and patted Alsatians for luck. They were cursed for another reason entirely: they cost the Twins their lives. ‘It’s because ...”

“... it back, and – the Danes and Prussians making no great fuss – they kept it.Under the Union Jack, the colonial governors tolerated and even encouraged German tourism. Hotels and restaurants appeared, and soon a Spielbank gambling casino (the Colonial Office strongly disapproved, but successive governors pleaded that it was something German visitors ...”

“... larger unit of the fledgling ANA. Sitting around a wooden table, Mac, Shadders, Dave Wilkinson and Jack Mizon described how much of an ask that is. They started politely and diplomatically by describing the ANA as ‘below average’ but were encouraged by the general laughter to give me the whole story. By the time they had finished I had an image of the ANA ...”

“... and the public was finding new gods to worship. In 1836, two Paris dailies halved their cover price by accepting advertisements. Newspaper proprietors then discovered that running novels in instalments boosted circulation and that the words ‘To be continued’ were an infallible recipe for brand loyalty. The roman feuilleton offered huge rewards to ...”

“... just how those dreams had been deferred. Yet tonight the cemetery of hope and idealism is empty. Jack Kennedy is alive. Martin Luther King is alive. Bobby Kennedy is alive. James Baldwin is alive. Janis Joplin is alive. Jack Kerouac is alive. Jimi Hendrix is alive. Lyndon Johnson is alive. James Jones is alive. Jim ...”

“... Strand, the lodgings of his cousin and the disciple, Thomas Wintour. Three other men were invited: Jack Wright, a swordsman friend of Catesby’s; Thomas Percy, Wright’s brother-in-law and man of business to his kinsman, the magnate and Councillor the Earl of Northumberland; and Guido Fawkes, a phlegmatic and reliable soldier brought over from Catholic ...”

“... is likely to be badly printed on ephemeral paper, with no usable margins, at maybe ten times the price you would have paid in the Sixties. Publishers blame the cost of paper and warehousing, and the decline of the reading public. The public blames the publishers for selling out to profit-hungry conglomerates. Bookshops disappear, and the range of titles in ...”

“... approved FDR’s revised version of the AAA. It allowed farmers to vote in an annual referendum on price supports, which would maintain a minimum price for tobacco. They responded by voting against the subsidy programme and returning to overproduction – until demand dived the following year, when the start of the Second ...”

“... growl ‘Basilisks!’ He has seen changes and revolutions, castles falling, dunghills rising, Jack as good as his master. In private how bitterly he mocks them, shivering slaves who always finish up their gossipy tales with a wheedling ‘Mind you, I said nothing!’ Not that anybody would ever be so tactless as to press him about some gossip that he has ...”

“... On 5 December 1963, the day Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, a man in Boston named Arthur Inman, having made several earlier attempts on his own life, managed to put a bullet through his head. A variety of chronic ailments and complaints had made him an invalid for nearly all of his 68 years, and except for brief excursions in his ancient chauffeur-driven Cadillac, he had since 1919 confined himself to an apartment building in downtown Boston named Garrison Hall ...”